Conversation
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Scroll quattuordecim
sourceWelcome to volume fourteen of Scrolls, a newsletter for sharing cool stuff from the IndieWeb, Fediverse & Cybersecurity realms. This week we discuss the value of your personal web identity, we talk toot-mobility, and we automate our “no’s”.
IndieWeb
A personal web site can be a lot of things. Maybe most importantly though, it can (and should) serve as your canonical identity on the web. So whether you are a creator, or just a “regular” person on the web in this modern world. It’s important to claim a space for yourself, not to only rent space on some large platform that could disappear on a whim. Use this space to speak your mind, or at least, use it as a centralized place to archive what you’ve first-published elsewhere. I’m not saying it doesn’t take a little bit of work to get this set up. But the benefits are worth it!
One of said benefits, which is really hard to measure, is the simple joy and pride that comes with building a space that is unique, and entirely you. With a personal site, you are free to tap into your creativity and the limitless canvas of the web, rather than being shoved into a box with a character-limit on a boring-looking site where you are nothing more than a “user”—a powerless @handle at the mercy of a faceless corporation. Why conform when you could be your unique self!
Second, you are free to write (or share) whatever you’d like, styled to your exact specification. Writing itself isn’t always easy, but what you publish can be as long as you’d like, as trivial as you’d like (though you may be surprised to discover the value of things you thought to be trivial), styled however you want and in any format you can imagine.
As I’ve said before, there are many goals served by having your own li’l personal space on the web. For many, it’s about tapping into the larger IndieWeb community. Though it may be hard to see it at first, this slice of the web is growing and becoming increasingly vibrant. Once here though, how do we “connect”? Email has of course remained a mainstay. Adding some level of Fediverse interoperability is also an option. Though it’s only one-way, RSS remains a popular (and unintrusive) way of getting your message out to people who want to hear it. The IndieWeb is a community—in fact it’s a community of communities—places where we can learn from and support one another.
So flutter forth and meet some cool new people! To get ya started, check out the awesome sites I’ve shared below!
Small Web Finds and Features
- İstanbul weeknotes by Felix
- Eva.town from Eva Decker
- Seavalanche from Vesnea
- Marijkeluttekes.dev by Marijke Luttekes
- Refreshing by Ashur
- Cult of the Party Parrot 🎉🦜
- Shoutout to Juhis for mentioning Scrolls is his latest From Juhis with Love newsletter!
Fediverse
Alriiiight, let’s settle into the Fedi’ section with some sweet jams 🎶
A lot of people see the IndieWeb, and for similar reasons, the Fediverse as somewhat of a “black hole” in terms of reach. Too often I see people refer to their posts as “shouting into the void”—and while I think there’s some truth to this, it is only the case because we’ve over-conditioned ourselves to be reliant on algorithms to serve as vehicles for said reach.
Reach (and in the inverse, discovery) work a bit differently in an algo-less world. Here we rely on human-led curation, organic conversation, and authenticity over algorithm-driven click/engagement-bait and likes-fueled post favorabilty which has only ever served “influencer“-types. But make no mistake, even without a native “algorithm”, your posts on the Fediverse have real traveling potential, courtesy of the communities and relationships who value who you are and what you have to say.
Speaking of which, in the course of publishing this newsletter each week, I have had the pleasure of featuring a LOT of awesome artists, ALL of whom I’ve discovered on the Fediverse. I encourage you to click on each of the images I share each week to check out their craft, give them a follow, let them know you appreciate their work and for many, you could even have some of your own art commissioned! Scrolls has always been the best of my web/social timelines—aggregated and synthesized by me. So though I have so many of you to thank, a disproportinate portion of the vibrancy of each “Scroll” can be credited to these super talented artists. Thank you! 🎨 🧡
Here’s how I’ll send this section off…
The Fediverse is not just one thing. It’s not perfect. But what it offers is a place to be you. To build meaningful relationships, that for real can’t be snatched away by a billionaire. Where your interactions, however small, can really mean something, and you can actually enjoy the time you spend scrollin’ your feed.
Cybersecurity
Yeehaw! Here’s this week’s cyber-roundup 🤠
Shostack’s Appsec Roundup is absolutely overflowing with great links. I’ve bookmarked like 8 things out of there. Python went out and got a cryptographic makeover. Two “named vulnerabilities” debuted in the last week—AirBorne & OuttaTune.
Tooling-wise, AWS Security Changes looks interesting for tracking minute security-related changes to AWS services, and NOVA can help detect adversarial (LLM) prompts. Want to automated your security team with a very old-school state of mind? Just redirect all security advisory requests to this handy-dandy API.
IndieSec Blogs- Security By Nature by Antonin
- KnifeCoat by FuzzySec
- The Cyber Blog by Kuzey Arda Bulut
- Sapir’s failed research blog by Sapir
Thanks for reading Scrolls. Here’s a hug!
